Phil Lynott Biography

Philip Lynott was born on August 20, 1949.In his early teens, Philip joined a local band called the Black Eagles
as their vocalist. The group played the chart songs of the day, and
became locally popular. Their drummer was Brian Downey, who had
been at school with Philip, and was to remain associated with him for
many years, both personally and professionally. The Black Eagles
eventually became well-known enough to open for some of the most
fashionable Irish "showbands" in huge ballrooms up and down the
country. By the time Lynott was 18, however, the group had fallen
apart and he was asked to join Brendan "Brush" Shiels' group, Skid
Row. "I didn't particularly want someone who could sing well", Shiels
said,"I just wanted someone who looked good. Philip was about the
best-looking boy around, and I knew that with him fronting the band
we'd get lots of attention from the girls."

In 1968, Skid Row's guitarist was replaced by "a kid from Belfast"
named Gary Moore, whose talent sent the band in a new direction.
They began introducing original material into their sets, and in 1969
came out with their first single. "New Faces, Old Places", a Brush
Shiels composition, was released on the independent Song label. It is
Lynott's first appearance on vinyl.

Shortly after that, Philip left the band to have his tonsils removed, and
was not invited to return. Shiels remained interested in him, however,
and volunteered to teach him to play the bass. Brush chose the bass
rather than the guitar because,"with only four strings to worry about
he could have a band together in three months, but with six strings to
contend with it would take much longer." Sure enough, just about the
time that Philip began to master the bass, he ran into his old friend,
drummer Brian Downey. Downey was temporarily out of work, and
when he heard that Lynott was in the same case he said,"Hey, let's
start a band!" They did, with the addition of Pat Quigley on bass and
a guitarist called Joe Staunton. This band, known as Orphanage,
provided Lynott with his first chance to perform original material. In
fact, Downey said that,"Quite a few of the melodies that ended up on
the first Lizzy album were being thrown around in Orphanage." He
added that,"We were getting into the hippy thing, doing a bit of acid,
hash, and stuff like that. It didn't improve matters musically, but it
was fun!"

At the end of 1969, Lynott and Downey were approached by guitarist
Eric Bell about the possibility of forming a new band. It was Downey
that Bell was really interested in, but Phil joined too, with the proviso
that he would play the bass (he had been strictly a vocalist) and do
some of his original songs. By early 1970, they had agreed on a
format and a name, and Thin Lizzy was born. When the band
announced their name to the Irish press in February, the line-up was
Eric Bell (guitar), Brian Downey (drums), Philip Lynott (bass and
vocals), and Eric Wrixon (keyboards).

By July, the band was working on a studio single, one of Lynott's own
compositions. Released on the Parlophone label on July 31st, 1970,
"The Farmer" was Thin Lizzy's first record. It was hardly a
chartbuster. In fact, folklore says that of the 500 copies pressed, 283
were sold, the rest being melted down in an early example of
recycling.

Wrixon left the band at about this time, and the remaining three were
playing four and five nights a week just to keep going. These early
days of Thin Lizzy were described by Peter Eustace, the group's "first
and last roadie": "Thin Lizzy was very much Eric's band at the
beginning, and Phil barely got a look-in. My earliest memory of Thin
Lizzy live was that it was just Eric going through his Jeff Beck and
Jimi Hendrix routines." By the end of the year, the band had signed
with Decca Records, and their first album, "Thin Lizzy", was released
in April of 1971. Of the group's first recording sessions, Bell
said,"We were totally bombed for the duration of that record,
completely out of our tree. Our producer, Scott English, was in even
worse shape. At one point we were tuning up, and Scott said,'OK, let's
tape that'! God knows how we got anything done - we were all an inch
and a half above the floor for two weeks." Despite its technical flaws,
however, "Thin Lizzy" managed to capture the band's fiery Celtic
spirit and progressive intent.

The band's second Decca album,"Shades of a Blue Orphanage", was
released in March of 1972. Overall, it lacked the quality of "Thin
Lizzy"; as a follow-up, it was more of an anti-climax. Thin Lizzy toured
Europe in 1972, a trip which produced some notable memories.
Manager Ted Carroll recalled one occasion among many:"We spent
the afternoon up in the mountains, taking acid and playing football.
We returned to the hotel to find a show going on - there was a band
like a Turkish version of the Shadows playing this awful music, while
a woman of about 45 was writhing around, pouring hot wax all over
herself. She ended up putting out the candle by sticking it up
her....well, you can imagine. We couldn't believe it, especially after all
the acid." At this early stage, Thin Lizzy was already developing the
brawling, anything-goes style that distinguished them throughout their
career.

Like most bands that hadn't had the luxury of a hit single, Lizzy's
financial status was shaky, to say the least. Yet such was their
popularity back in Ireland that they were able to use home tours as a
means of keeping afloat. The money they made from those Irish gigs
esentially subsidized their work in England, where the band was
literally losing money. Lizzy could make five times as much in Ireland,
but if they wanted to break into the big marketplace, they had to keep
playing in England.

In late 1972, Thin Lizzy toured as a support band to Slade.

Thin Lizzy's third album,"Vagabonds of the Western World", was
released in September of 1973, and the band was pleased with the
result. Downey said,"The quality of Philip's songwriting and the
aggression in our playing made it a good album. I think "The
Rocker" just about sums up what Thin Lizzy was all about at that
time."

In January of 1974, Eric Bell left the band. He was replaced by Gary
Moore for the remainder of the Irish tour and the English one which
followed. By April, though, Moore had had enough. He had been
drunk every night and hung-over every morning for about four
months, and,"Ultimately I left Thin Lizzy because I realized I was
killing myself."

Thin Lizzy was then joined by two new
guitarists, 17-year old Brian "Robbo"
Robertson of Glasgow, and a Californian
named William Scott Gorham. The band's
deal with Decca had run out, and they
signed on with Phonogram. Their fourth
album, "Night Life", was released in
November 1974. It wasn't the most
successful of projects either commercially or artistically, but the sheer
amount of road work the band was doing suggested that they could
only get better.

In March of 1975, Thin Lizzy visited the
United States for the first time, touring with
Bob Seger and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Scott Gorham said,"BTO were a very
professional band, and gave us an indication
of what was expected of us on a bigger
stage. We went on that tour thinking that if
we were supposed to be on at 8:00, we'd
probably make it by about 8:30. That attitude ended the first night,
when their manager had ours up against the wall by the scruff of his
neck, threatening to throw us off the tour if we were ever late again.
The next night we were on by 7:55!" Another difference the tour
made was that Lynott saw first-hand the kind of effort and projection
that top-rank bands put into their performance. By the time they
returned to the UK, Lizzy was an altogether tighter band. They
released the album "Fighting" in September of 1975, and ended the
year on a high note, turning in a great performance at the Great
British Music Festival at Olympia on December 31st.

1976 brought the breakthrough album
"Jailbreak". Gorham said,"I suppose the
most obvious improvement was the twin
guitar thing, which we fell into about the
time of "Fighting", but which didn't become
a big deal until "Jailbreak". Wishbone Ash
had done the twin guitar thing before us, but
we took the idea and put it into a hard rock
context, with more aggression." The key track on the album was
"The Boys Are Back in Town", arguably Lynott's most famous song.
The single was released in April of 1976, and reached number eight
on the British charts. It reached the Top Twenty in the States as well,
and the album notched up sales of 100,000, far in excess of anything
the band had achieved previously. This was Thin Lizzy in focus, and
the group was at last beginning to make money.

Just seven months after "Jailbreak", in
October 1976, the band released another
album, this one called "Johnny the Fox". It
was an ideal follow-up to "Jailbreak", and
confirmation that Thin Lizzy was on the
crest of a wave. The album went to number
twelve on the UK charts.

Although a tour of the States had been planned for
November/December, Lizzy's brawling surfaced again and forced a
cancellation. The road crew was actually in New York, finalizing the
preparations, when they were told that guitarist Robertson had
slashed his hand in a bar fight and would be unable to make the tour.
There are several versions of this story, and Robbo still insists that
the injury was due to bad luck rather than bad judgment. The
agreed-on facts, however, are that the incident happened in a bar, late
at night, and that the injury was inflicted with a broken bottle.

After the injury, Robbo was told that he would never play again. That
turned out to be untrue, but the issue of whether he would ever play
with Thin Lizzy again was far from settled. Gary Moore was once
again recruited to fill out the line-up, and in early 1977 the band took
off for a US tour as the supporting band for Queen. (This gave the
marketing men the chance to come up with one of the corniest titles of
all time; in Elizabeth II's Jubilee Year the it was billed as "The Queen
Lizzy Tour".)

Moore left Thin Lizzy at the end of the tour,
and the remaining three began work on
another studio album. "Bad Reputation"
took shape during May and June of 1977,
by which time Robbo was back with the
group, at least on a session basis. During
August the band, with Robbo officially
"guesting" on guitar, undertook a European
festival tour. In September "Bad Reputation" was released, and
quickly rose to number four on the UK charts. Thin Lizzy had never
been bigger, nor Lynott more influential: adored by fans, admired by
contemporaries, accepted by critics, and a natural for the media.

It was, however, a time when those who knew Philip best began to
sense a change in his personality. In retrospect, it can be blamed
partly on the fame that he was enjoying, and partly on the drugs he
was taking. Whatever the explanation, the emergence of Philip Lynott
the Difficult Artiste dates from the summer of 1977 and Thin Lizzy's
autumn U.S. tour.

Tour manager Frank Murray recalled,"The problem was that we'd all
been hitting it a bit heavy - smoke, drink, coke, and so on. But then
Philip started taking tranquilizers; he'd do all this coke to keep him
awake until five in the morning, and then take a load of sleeping pills
to get himself to sleep. Then there'd be someone knocking on his door
a few hours later trying to get him on the bus to the next town.
Consequently, he'd usually be in a really foul mood, and he'd be
looking for a fight." Live sound engineer Peter Eustace added,"Philip
was OK until he discovered powders, pills, and potions."

Of course, with Thin Lizzy nothing ever went as planned anyway. For
their UK tour in late 1977, the record company decided to lay on a
limo to promote the band's cool rock star image. But because there
was only one limo, they were hauling around a trunkful of gear - so
much that the trunk would never shut properly. They ended up having
to tie the trunk lid down with a wire coat hanger, which totally
destroyed the look of opulence the limo was supposed to project. That
was typical Thin Lizzy.

1978 began with the mixing of the double
album "Live and Dangerous". Released in
June, it was a hit on both sides of the
Atlantic. On this album, for the first time,
the band managed to recreate the
excitement of their stage performances in
the studio. The live rendition of "Still in
Love With You" is considered by some to
be the highlight of Lynott's entire career.

The 1978 summer tour was the last featuring the Robbo line-up.
Tension had been building for some time; Brian Downey said
that,"Robbo always seemed to be in the wars - broken bones, cuts,
bruises, slashed tendons, and God knows what else. You never knew
if he was going to turn up to the next gig in one piece." "He was a
fucking nut case",added Scott Gorham,"He was a great player and a
lot of fun to be with. But Phil was always pissed at him for some
reason, and in the end even I had to agree that he was a liability."
Robbo himself admitted,"I was really out of control, a complete
asshole. I used to drink a lot of whiskey and snort a lot of speed, so I
was fired up a lot of the time, like a stick of dynamite waiting to
explode. I mean, I'm short-tempered enough, but when I'm on
whiskey and speed I'm uncontrollable."

In the fall Thin Lizzy took off for the States again, with Gary Moore
replacing Robbo, but without Brian Downey. "I was totally
exhausted", he said,"I just couldn't take any more. I didn't want to
see another stage again, and I certainly didn't want to go on to
Australia, as had been proposed." The band auditioned drummers in
LA, and as Moore told it,"One of the guys we tried was Terry Bozzio,
but he just didn't fit in with us - he didn't do drugs and he didn't say
"fuck" enough times in a sentence! Plus, he wanted to bring his wife
on the road. We were like,"Oh, yeah, SURE!" So we ditched him and
got in Mark Nauseef, who'd been playing with the Ian Gillan Band."

This "Live and Dangerous" tour was marked by turbulence, as
everyone from Phil to the limo driver got into fights. Two of the road
crew got arrested in Honolulu on the trip to Australia, and the whole
trek was something of a circus. "Typical Lizzy, really. If it wasn't for
bad luck we wouldn't have had any luck at all."

Moore and Nauseef flew back to LA when
the tour was over, and the remaining
members of the band returned to London to
begin work on the next album. They were
soon joined by a rejuvenated Brian Downey,
and Thin Lizzy released "Black Rose" in
April of 1979. The centerpiece of the album
was the title track, in Gaelic "Roisin
Dubh". It was possibly the most ambitious piece of music Lizzy had
ever attempted, sprawling across the second side of the record in four
sections - 1)Shanendoah, 2)Will You Go, Lassie, Go, 3) Danny Boy,
and 4)The Mason's Apron.

Gary Moore was back with the band for their next U.S. tour, but as he
recalled,"It quickly became apparent to me that things were going
downhill. Phil just wanted to have a good time basically, and it seemed
like he didn't give a shit about performing. It got to the point where
the party after the show was more important than the show itself. Phil
was becoming harder and harder to work with. You couldn't get him
out of his hotel room, for a start. We were always late for everything.
Scott used to call us the most unprofessional professional band in the
business, and he was dead right."

The friction between Moore and Lynott reached its peak in July, and
Moore quit the band in mid-tour. "I couldn't stand there watching Phil
blow it night after night", Moore said. "No one could control him. I
told someone once that they fired me for going on stage with my
guitar in tune! I was joking, but it was a bit like that."

Moore was replaced by Midge Ure, and for their tour of Japan in
September Lynott added a fifth player, guitarist Dave Flett. This
allowed Ure to switch to keyboards for some songs, and it also
afforded a spectacle not seen since the demise of Lynyrd Skynyrd -
three lead guitars huddled together at the front of the stage.

On St. Valentine's Day, 1980, Philip Lynott married Caroline
Crowther, the mother of his 14-month old daughter, Sarah. One of the
highlights of the wedding was the speech given by the bride's father,
entertainer Leslie Crowther. "When Philip asked for my daughter's
hand in marriage",Crowther quipped,"I said,'Why not? You've had
everything else!'" This was confirmed by the arrival of their second
daughter, Cathleen, some five months after the wedding.

About the same time as the wedding, Thin Lizzy announced the name
of their new guitar player. It was Terrence Charles "Snowy" White, a
seasoned session player who had worked with artists as varied as
Peter Green, Al Stewart, Cliff Richard, and Pink Floyd. The new
line-up also included keyboardist Darren Wharton. Lynott's first solo
album, "Solo in Soho", was released in April of 1980, and in May the
band opened their "Chinatown" tour, although the album of that name
was still languishing in the studio. The tour was a lackluster affair,
and most of the blame fell on Snowy White. He was a great guitar
player, but not much of a showman onstage. (A joke of the time was
that White took valium as a stimulant!)

"Chinatown" was finally released in October, and the track "Killer on
the Loose" provided the band with another hit single. On the whole,
though, the album was judged to be "agonizingly average". In March
of 1981 Vertigo released the compilation album, "The Adventures of
Thin Lizzy", which went gold in the UK.

The next project in the production line was the album "Renegade",
released in November of 1981. Like "Chinatown", "Renegade"
tends to get swept under the carpet when rock historians review
Lizzy's recording career. But, while most fans would agree that the
two Snowy White albums lacked the firepower of some of the earlier
releases, it seems unfair that an album containing such stirring songs
as "Renegade", "Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)", and "It's
Getting Dangerous" is regarded with so little enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, whatever its artistic merit, the album was a commercial
failure.

Some of the problem had to do with the fact that Lizzy's sound fell into
the gap between heavy metal and pop music, sometimes pleasing the
fans of neither. There was also the question of image: one of the
tracks from "Solo in Soho", "Yellow Pearl" had been picked up by
the BBC as the theme tune for their "Top of the Pops" show, and
hard-core rock fans felt that Lynott had no business being associated
with such pap. Part of the band's problem, however, was
unquestionably due to an increase in activity in "the illegal chemical
sweepstakes". Everyone knew that Philip was getting heavily
involved with drugs.

han face another siege in the studio for which Philip
might, or might not, show up and might, or might not, be capable of
working, White quit the band. Even manager Chris O'Donnell, who
had been part of Lizzy's team since 1973, threw in his hand. He'd had
enough of watching the deterioration of the band, and especially of its
leader. His assessment of the last years he was with Lizzy is brusque:
""Chinatown" was absolute garbage, and when Phil brought in a
keyboard player for "Renegade", that was it for me. A once brilliant
band was turning into a pile of crap before my very eyes."

Philip's second solo album,"The Philip Lynott Album" was released in
October of 1982. It has been described as "a patchwork of simple
ideas drenched in the moist-eyed emotions of a soppy, sentimental
fool", which seems hard to improve upon. Following the failure of
"Renegade", this work made it clear that both Lynott's future and
that of the band were in jeopardy.

The main thing that held Thin Lizzy together for one more album and
one more tour was their precarious financial situation. The band was,
in fact, on the verge of bankruptcy - they couldn't afford to quit.
Manager Chris Morrison recalled,"In those days it was costing about
500,000 pounds a year to run Thin Lizzy. Every person on that crew
was on a bloody retainer, and the wages bill was enormous. I work
with bands today (1993) that cost 50,000 pounds a year to keep
together, so you can imagine the extravagance of the Lizzy
operation." It was Morrison who came up with the idea of billing the
"Thunder and Lightning" tour as a Farewell Tour, in order to
increase ticket sales.

In fact, "Thunder and Lightning", with John Sykes replacing Snowy
White on guitar, was probably the best work the band had done since
1976. It did well on the charts, reaching the highest position (#4) of
any Lizzy album since "Black Rose". Within days of the press
announcement of the Farewell Tour, all the tickets had been snapped
up. With the success of the album sales as well, it began to look as if
Thin Lizzy would be able to clear their debts, and move on with clean
slates.

At the last of Thin Lizzy's shows at the Hammersmith Odeon (March
12, 1983), Chris Morrison realized a long-standing dream - the
reunion of the Lizzy guitarists. As the main set reached its climax, out
from the wings stepped Brian Robertson to contest one more dual
with Scott Gorham on their signature songs "Emerald", "Rosalie",
and "Baby Drives Me Crazy". Then Gary Moore waltzed on stage to
lead the band in "Still in Love With You" and "Black Rose". Eric
Bell joined the party for "Whiskey in the Jar", and then the whole
pack fought over "The Rocker".

Originally planned to last three months, the Farewell Tour ended up
lasting nearly a year. After the UK and Scandinavia, the band went on
to Japan, where the trip turned into a nightmare. Peter Eustace
recalled,"Phil couldn't get any heroin in Japan, and he was in a bad
way." He came apart during the set one night, delivering a long
rambling monologue before staggering offstage. After that he pulled
himself together after a fashion, but didn't really recover until they
left Japan.

Thin Lizzy presented Phonogram with a live double album in
fulfillment of their contract and as a souvenir of the last tour. Titled
"Life", the album included the guitar jam at Hammersmith, and it
should have been a treasure. Unfortunately, Lynott insisted on doing
the mixing himself, and he just wasn't up to the job. Not only was the
finished mix rough, but it took forever and cost a fortune. The album
didn't come out until the end of the year, when the furor had long
since died down.

The band's last show was on September 4, 1983, in Nuremburg,
Germany. The end of Thin Lizzy came not with a bang but a whimper.
"After Germany", said Darren Wharton,"we said goodbye at the
airport and that was it."

Aftermath: Chasing the Dragon

For the remaining three years of his life,
Philip Lynott's heroin use became
progressively more obvious, and his
deterioration progressively more
pronounced. His wife Caroline left him,
taking their daughters, whom her family
sought to protect from their father's
lifestyle.
After the break-up of Thin Lizzy, Lynott put
together a band called Grand Slam. With
Mark Stanway on keyboards, Laurence Archer on guitars, Robbie
Brennan on drums, and Doish Nagle as rhythm guitarist, Grand Slam
debuted in London in May of 1984. The band was well-received, and
presented some impressive original material. The problem was that
no one in the music industry was prepared to gamble on a renowned
heroin addict who was embarking on a mid-life career change. Even
with Chris Morrison's management, Grand Slam could not sign a
record deal. It did not help that the band was out of control, drunk
and/or stoned for every performance. Lynott, Nagle, and Brennan
were shooting heroin as well.

Grand Slam gigged through 1984, interspersing their live shows with
short spells in the studio. But Mark Stanway recalled that "toward
the end [Lynott's] moods were unbelievable, almost psychopathic. It
was terrible rehearsing with him, because if he was on the gear he'd
carry on playing the same thing for two hours. He'd forget the words.
He put on weight, and seemed to lose all his pride in his appearance."

One of the band's last shows took place at the Marquee in London at
Christmastime. It was a great show, made even more remarkable by
the condition that at least three of the band members were in at the
time. In the end, however, the money ran out, and without the security
of a record deal Morrison couldn't keep the band going.

n 1985 Lynott worked with Gary Moore on Moore's song, "Out in
the Fields". When this was released, it was backed by Lynott's
"Military Man", which he had written for Grand Slam. The record
reached #5 on the UK charts in May. "Nineteen", another Grand
Slam song, was released in November, and Philip was beginning work
on another album. By this time, though, his health had become so bad
that "his body had just about shut down".

On Christmas Day, 1985, Philip Lynott was found unconscious in his
London house. He was taken to Salisbury Hospital, where he died on
January 4th, 1986. The pathologist's report indicated that he had
developed multiple internal abcesses and blood poisoning, as a result
of which he had suffered kidney, liver, and heart failure. "Phil didn't
die of a heart attack; he died of a life style."

On January 9th a service was held for Lynott at St. Elizabeth's
Church in Richmond, and on January 11th he was buried from the
Howth Parish Church in Ireland. The Gaelic inscription on his stone
reads,"Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas da anam" - "May God give peace
to his soul".